In the retail trade, a plurality of goods supplied by suppliers or central distribution centers need to be sorted into display shelves in the retail business where they are then ready for sale to the customers. This is usually done purely manually by corresponding personnel in the retail business.
Aside from the refilling of the display shelves with new goods, it is primarily also necessary in the retail businesses to push goods to the front of the display from time to time, after individual goods have been sold, in order that a tidy and positive overall impression may be presented to the purchasers. Especially in the case of retail businesses offering high-quality goods and/or services, it is particularly important to create an ambience for sophisticated customers that encourages sales. An indispensable part of this is the pushing or tracking of goods stored in the shelves to the very front of the display in order that the impression may be conveyed to the customer that he can choose from a new, fresh and complete range, without having to make do with selected or leftover goods. For this reason, more than one-third of the sales personnel in some retail businesses, such as supermarkets and the like, spend their time filling or closing gaps in display shelves that have arisen from sold goods.
Additionally, the sales personnel must also refill the shelves with the repeat deliveries of goods.
To this end, the goods, mostly delivered by truck, first have to be unpacked from the packaging, such as boxes, and transported to the corresponding shelves where they are sorted into the corresponding display compartments. This involves considerable effort.
Effort is especially involved in ensuring that those goods which, for example, have an earlier expiration date, are always at the front. Since replenishment goods are generally also sorted into the shelf from the front and these goods with their later expiration date first have to be sorted into the back of the shelf, all the goods already in the shelf first have to be removed, the replenishment goods have to be placed at the rear of the shelf and then, in turn, the goods with the earlier expiration date have to be arranged at the front.
Both pure tracking of the goods to the front of the shelf and re-sorting according to expiration dates lead to substantial effort that so far has had to be performed manually by personnel.